Chap 16 Newtopia for Guernica to Guggenheim

Chapter 16 “Newtopia”: Artists Address Human Rights From Guernica to Guggenheim, Relations in Art and Politics from a Comparative Perspective, Center for Basque Studies, 2015 “We can at least dream of a new way for human societies to live together, caring for and respecting each other as brothers and sisters.” Stéphane Hessel (2012) In the fall of 2012 the city of Mechelen in Belgium hosted the exhibition “Newtopia, the State of Human Rights,” curated by Katerina Gregos. Closely based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, this groundbreaking exhibition presents both historical and contemporary artists who are deeply committed to analyzing political process and social issues. Art works that address such topics as torture and immigration increase their impact when framed by human rights discourses. The exhibition places them in relationship to the four categories of human rights cited in the Universal Declaration, civil, political, social, and economic. In the process, “Newtopia” demonstrates the creative subtlety with which artists address these concerns. The affiliation with human rights provides a new direction for the analysis of engaged art, as well as new possibilities for more nuanced visual campaigns linked to activist issues. While many treaties and covenants followed the original Declaration as a means of enforcing it legally, the principles laid out in the Declaration have continuously had enormous moral authority. They are constantly cited in movements across the globe as a means of shaming individuals and governments into action. Its articles were developed from June 1947 to December 1948 under the auspices of the newly formed United Nations and in the midst of the emergence of the Cold War, the partition of India and Pakistan, and the creation of the State of Israel. The committee, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, received input from thinkers around the world, including Mahatma Gandhi, Chung-Shu Lo, a Confucian scholar, and Humayun Kabir, a renowned Bengali leader. They all stated that the principles of human rights, if not the term, existed in their cultures and ideologies.1 At the same time, these rights, as thought through by the original writers from diverse backgrounds, are fundamental to human existence everywhere. Some recent writers have contested that rights are culturally contingent, and it is true that rights-based language has Western origins. However, the rights articulated by the Universal Declaration began by carefully incorporating non-Western conceptions of ethical responsibility, and they have evolved since their adoption through myriad social, legal, and political movements from around the world. Thus, rights such as that articulated by Article 3, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person,” are expressed in rights-based terms, but have come to mean much more than narrow or Westernized articulations of “rights.” Life is not a culturally contingent idea.2 1 Glendon, A World Made New, 73–74. Both the Declaration and “Newtopia” take the Holocaust during World War II as their foundation and point of departure. In the Preamble of the Declaration, the first statement of principle is the “inherent dignity . of all members of the human family . , whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts . it is essential . that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” Likewise “Newtopia” is a direct response to those same “barbarous acts” in both its location and purpose. Mechelen, Belgium is located half way between Antwerp and Brussels, and was a major center for the deportation of Jews, Roma, and others to Auschwitz during World War II. In November 2012, concurrently with the “Newtopia” exhibition, the City of Mechelen opened Kazerne Dossin, a Memorial, Museum, and Documentation Center of the Holocaust and Human Rights. The museum is directly opposite the army barracks in which people were gathered for deportation. Commissioned as part of “Newtopia” is the artwork, MenschenDinge by the artist Esther Shalev-Gerz.3 According to the catalog, the word is invented by the artist. It can mean “‘the human aspect of objects’. The original German, however, is much wider, allowing for a variety of possible interpretations. The human and the object blend in the German word, the object becomes humanized, animated and the human objectified to some extent. These objects-by- humans, or human-objects can be perceived as a community of a kind, because they have shared the same dehumanized life.” The artist presents interviews with professionals organizing Auschwitz as a memorial site. They are responding to the objects that survived at the camp after it was liberated. On other floors, the museum documents as thoroughly as possible, the names and faces of 26,000 of those who were deported. The Declaration and the exhibition are organized around the same groupings of human rights. In the Declaration the articles are conceptually ordered into individual rights, civil rights, political rights, economic, social, and cultural rights, and finally by the rights and responsibilities of the individual in society. In the exhibition, these ideas are ordered into four chapters: civil and political rights in Chapter 1, and social, economic, and cultural rights in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 addresses the same human rights from the perspective of changes in the world since 1948, including decolonization, globalization, global capital, and multiculturalism. Chapter 4 calls for a new way to realize human rights in “Thinking beyond the Here and Now” It is described as “poetic, transformative leaps of the imagination,” and “a diagnostic, programmatic of radical intervention in real life.”4 2 Gregos, “Righting of Human Rights,” 22–24 as well as Hessel, “Interview” with Stéphane Hessel, Newtopia, 103–4 discuss this question. Stéphane Hessel participated in the original process of drafting the Declaration in 1948. He had his roots in the French Resistance movement. His pamphlets Indignez -Vous! (Time for Outrage!) 2010 and Engagez-Vous! 2011 became worldwide bestsellers and handouts during the Occupy movement and beyond. He died in February, 2013, an outspoken activist to the end: Weber and de la Baume, “Stéphane Hessel, Author and Activist, Dies at 95,” The New York Times, February 27, 2013. 3 According to the catalog, the word is invented by the artist. It can mean “ ‘the human aspect of objects’. The original German, however, is much wider, allowing for a variety of possible interpretations. The human and the object blend in the German word, the object becomes humanized, animated and the human objectified to some extent. These objects-by humans, or human-objects can be perceived as a community of a kind, because they have shared the same dehumanized life.” Unsigned, Newtopia, 237 4 Gregos, Newtopia, 49. As a curator, Katerina Gregos has already demonstrated her ability to take on art that addresses complex and controversial political issues in “Speech Matters,” the Danish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. Although the controversy over the cartoon that depicted Mohammed published in Denmark in 2005 was one starting point for the pavilion, Gregos framed “freedom of speech” as a discursive issue with both historical and international significance. She assembled eighteen artists from diverse cultural backgrounds and explored the topic further with a thoughtful catalog.5 In the present exhibition she has followed the same model, but greatly enlarged the theme and the scope. The art in “Newtopia” demonstrates the ways in which artists offer dramatic alternatives to the usual photographs and videos sponsored by human rights campaigns. As Ariella Azoulay concisely states in her catalog essay: “Human rights discourse as embodied in photography has cultivated two major figures to date: the victim, whose rights have been violated, and the spectator who is supposed to recognize this violation.”6 The straightforward, and actually effective, purpose of these photographs is to generate guilt and pity in order to encourage us to give money to the non- profit to help the situation. The fact that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are co-sponsors of “Newtopia” demonstrates that they are happy to embrace new ideas in their visual campaigns. Human Rights Watch, in particular, has already offered alternatives to traditional photographic approaches to visual imagery of human rights. The Human Rights Watch Film Festival shown annually in several cities states its commitment to bringing together creative thinking and human rights. 7 Although photography is a dominant medium in “Newtopia,” these artists re-negotiate the space between themselves, the subject, and the viewer in order to create new perceptions. As Katerina Gregos states “[art’s] great power is that it is able to change the way people think about the world. Art may expand perceptual horizons.”8 The benchmark artist of the exhibition, Alfredo Jaar, dramatically demonstrates that idea. In his early work, shown in Chapter 1, Jaar presents us with the perpetrators of human rights violations, rather than the victims. As a Chilean, Jaar’s subject is the CIA-engineered coup that killed Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. In Untitled (Handshake), he displays the 5 Gregos, ed., Speech Matters, Danish Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale. 6 Azoulay, “The (In)visible Victim-Deconstructing the Spectator’s Frame,” 67. 7 Human Rights Watch Film Festival statement of purpose: “Through our Human Rights Watch Film Festival we bear witness to human rights violations and create a forum for courageous individuals on both sides of the lens to empower audiences with the knowledge that personal commitment can make a difference. The film festival brings to life human rights abuses through storytelling in a way that challenges each individual to empathize and demand justice for all people.” http://ff.hrw.org/about, accessed April 20, 2013. Another, less well-known example is the systematic photographic portrayal of human rights, as both absence and presence, is Kälin, Muller, and Wyttenback, eds., The Face of Human Rights.

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